


Watch-Dog

by TisNotButAPhaseMother



Category: Thomas Sanders
Genre: Conceptual Craze, Implied/Referenced Bullying, Implied/Referenced Major Character Death, Implied/Referenced Suicide, M/M, Sanders Sides - Freeform, Witness me vent, domestic abuse, dreamscape, psychological abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-29
Updated: 2018-04-29
Packaged: 2019-04-29 11:40:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,532
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14471976
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TisNotButAPhaseMother/pseuds/TisNotButAPhaseMother
Summary: "And we are not friends anymore, which is understandable because I am still a watch-dog, and if I quit today, I won’t be anything at all, but not being anything at all is still better than being the one thing that makes you guilty for your existence itself. And Alice might have found truths that have lead her back to herself in the end, but I am no Alice and I was forsaken by the Gods, Deities, Witches, elements and flowers alike."





	Watch-Dog

When I woke up that day, I was still a watch-dog.

The Humans I have lived with were severely troubled. The Woman had hidden a bottle under her coat when I was giving her a kiss goodnight yesterday. She thought I won’t notice, but after so many years, my nose has become quite sensitive to the smell. I have left for my bed with a heavy and guilty heart, for a watch-dog I might be, I was also conditioned not to try to guard The Woman from the bottle again. It has already left me plenty scarred.

When I fell asleep, listening to The Woman’s steps around the house getting progressively more and more unsure, the sky was already breaking with a sickly yellow light.  
The Man had not returned until much later after I have kissed The Woman’s cheek. His smelled of other Women, who probably also kissed it, maybe also to bid him a good night. Not caring about the sacred veil of night-time quietness, he started screaming. He, as much as I did, could smell the bottle on Woman’s breath. Unlike me, though, his nose was not that of a mere watch-dog. His was the one of a wolf. 

I contemplated getting up on my wobbly legs and go protect The Woman, as I have done many times before. I was weak. I have not eaten the day before, and I have barely managed a light snack the day before that. I stole it from the kitchen. It used to be my kitchen, too, but ever since I have become a watch-dog, I was afraid of the humans using it. They always seemed to be angry or unhappy to see me there.

I stayed laying down like a miserable cowardly watch-dog I was, that night. I stayed laying down until The Man was fast asleep and The Woman singing broken melodies in another room.

The Boy was the worst of them all, I think. Because The Boy left. 

I slept on The Boy’s pillow and thought of the times before The Witch came and changed me into a watch-dog. When The Boy was there. He did not always like me, but He was kind enough, and big and strong and old and wise and calm and safe in the ways I couldn’t yet be. And when The Boy was there, I was His and He was Mine, and We were something that could be protected by its own bound to itself. 

Ever since The Boy left, even He only remembered me as a watch-dog.  
-  
In my class there were beautiful beings. There was a sad white-brown calf sitting a few rows behind me, her eyes big and dark and accusing, always silently blaming and knowing. There was a chameleon whose skin could change to any and all colours, patterns and hues, thus making him quite popular amongst the other creatures. There was A Small Deity of Fire who has gotten rained on once and could only produce harmless sparkles and gleaming ambers ever since. I thought them quite beautiful, but The Deity was very grim about the whole thing. 

They all despised me, for they were all beautiful creatures with stories, and I was a watch-dog. Watch-dogs don’t have stories. Watch-dogs are born with a purpose of being a watch-dog, and never being anything less or more. They haven’t known about The Witch and her curse, of course. But even if they did, it wouldn’t change the fact that I was a watch-dog now, and a bad one at that. 

You see, for all my apparent flaws, there was one that was agreeably the most ailing: I was mute. 

And what good is a mute watch-dog?  
-  
Even as a watch-dog, and a mute one at that, I had a friend. 

It wasn’t a friend in the same way you would maybe befriend a pretty blue-bird with breezy wings, or a gust of wind that sweeps important papers under the beds to fondly toy with you. This friend has made it known very early on in our relationship that they did not care about me at all. In fact, they did not care about anybody. All those creatures with their suffocating feelings and need for affection, explanation and conclusion would only slow them down on their adventures, and they had neither the need nor want for that sort of thing, no-sir. See, they were a brave warrior who fought dragons with songs and paint-brushes instead of a sword, and this Knight of The Brush had much to do and too little time in which to do it.

They liked me enough to seek out my company in particular because, as the opposite to our classmates, I was not Loud and I did not care that they didn’t have feelings. I myself had too many and could therefore understand the amazing convenience of the opposite. 

I liked them because they did not care whether you were a watch-dog, The Autumn Queen or a little mouse with fairy wings - they would absolutely despise you either way.  
-  
When I was little - and had yet to be cursed and become a watch-dog - I did not have any friends at all, and I had many bruises to prove the fact. They blossomed and crawled across my skin like angry, yet purposeful smudges on The Knight’s canvas, or violets in the late bloom sticking out amongst the sea of mild-mannered daisies. 

I reasoned with myself many times on the topic of why could that be – surely if so many other creatures have decided that I was unworthy of their friendship, but completely deserving of their whims of anger and cruelty, there must have been something wrong with me, not with them. In those days, I have changed myself so many times to try and find The Me that the other creatures could love, that I have completely forgotten what the “Me” used to be in the first place. And it never helped, either – once you were born something, even if you have forgotten what that is, the others can smell it on you. It’s like a really obtruding perfume of the auntie that likes to hug you a lot on Christmas – you cannot wash it away hard as you try, and it goes with you wherever you turn, making the others scrunch up their noses in disgust and look around speculatively, trying to find out the source of that offending scent. 

I often wonder, until this day, what my scent was. Personally I like to think it was a german marzipan, a dessert that I come to despise with vengeance. 

But after every day of forgetting myself, after each period of sandstorm spent confined indoors in the overwhelming noise and stench of something mean and vicious carefully watching the back of my neck and waiting to strike with words, hard fists and rotten things, I got rewarded by going Home – and there The Women would wait, without the bottle at the time, and eventually The Boy would come, and He would not talk to me too much, but The Woman would pet my head as if I was a good dog, and she would care for my scratches and torn ears and make sure I was fed. Then The Man would return in the late night, and it would bother me a bit, but those bothers and worries would be a hell-and-heaven distance away from the engulfing hot molasses of fear that would be swallowing my lungs in the years to come. 

It was understandable these days that no-one will be Home when I have returned. 

If they were, it was understandable that they will scream. They were troubled, and I was a watch-dog. 

When they screamed enough, they would shut the doors very loudly. They knew it scared me, and it was understandable that they’d do it. They were troubled. I was a watch-dog. 

And if they got troubled and angry enough, they would burst into my room screaming even louder, blaming me for the misfortune befalling them. And it was understandable that they’d do it, because they were troubled people, and I was their watch-dog, whether they wanted me or not. I was their watch-dog, unable to protect them from themselves, and therefore I deserved it. 

And they would not listen to my explanations, and even that would be understandable, because I was mute and their accusations loud.

And I would be so scared of being woken up by the doors banging and Humans screaming that I would rather not sleep at all, and it would be understandable. 

I was not supposed to sleep or eat, after all. 

I was a watch-dog.  
-  
He loves me, He loves me not. 

He loves me, He loves me not.

I lied. I did have one friend. 

He loves me, He loves me not.

The problem with this one was, He could not really be my friend, for I was deeply and unfortunately in love with Him.

He loves me, He loves me not.

I loved Him more than I have loved anything and anyone in my life. I loved Him more than I have loved loving itself. I loved Him like I would never love again, alive or in the Unknown that lies beneath our feet and that only those special ones without a physical form can ever enter. 

He loves me, He loves me not.

I have loved Him for the total of two years by the time I have decided to quit my job. That was an exciting story, mind you.

He loves me, He loves me not.

We have not seen each other much, but we wrote quite often. It was nice, to have words from someone, of someone, with someone, to someone. 

It was nice to have a friend, those two or three years. Although He wasn’t truly my friend, because I was in love with Him, and I was a watch-dog.

He loves me, He loves me not. 

We did not write to each other for the last year before I have decided to quit my job, though, because He fell in love with somebody 

\- He loves me, He loves me not – 

but that somebody did not love Him back. Trying to win their heart over has then proved to be a rather difficult task that would soon consume all of His energy and time, leaving our friendship-but-not-quite behind like a slowly wilting rose-bush on the Moon. Abandoned, unreal and completely and absurdly out of place. 

He loves me, He loves me not.

You see, that someone was an oaken tree, filled to the brim with a rich bitter resin, gifted with sturdy roots and reliable, strong branches, unique and still, timeless in its everlasting existence 

\- He loves me, He loves me not – 

and He was a dragonfly. 

He loves me, He loves me not, not, not.

A dragonfly with wings softer and quicker than a moonlight, colourful and articulate like a church window mosaic, and a heart that beat so fast but so, so, so very quiet, so very quiet that the still, majestic oaken tree could not hear Him if it tried. 

Loves me not, not, not. 

And I was a watch-dog, and He loved me not, not, not, but I still kept His number in my phone, where the only other numbers accompanying His were for The Boy, The Woman and The Man, and those numbers were for watch-dog things only. 

I kept His number because I was mute, but He would listen to me breathing and hear my untold explanations anyway. 

And I kept it because I was pathetic and I loved Him more than I loved loving itself.  
-  
After many years of not eating and not sleeping, and generally not being very good at my job, I have decided to quit. 

See, that was the exciting chapter of my life. Most people don’t get to make serious looking and important decisions such as this one until they are all grown up, have a paid job and an employer who they begged for the job. I got to make this super-important adult-like decision when I was fifteen. 

The Man was screaming at me again. It was nothing new, yet this time it was somewhat more awful. I was nothing but skin and bones by that time, with dark, ugly circles under my eyes, a buzzing black swarm of wasps between my ears and a hollow feeling swallowing my whole throat, lungs, heart and stomach, turning my legs into rubber and causing my arms to tremble with every breath give-away I have accomplished. 

The Man screamed for hours, and the wall behind my back and His hand at my front were the only powers in the world holding me at least somewhat upright. He screamed, and His words had a vicious stench, and I felt something hard and sealed, something meticulously watched over and protected, uncurl one inch below my left lung, in the space between it and the heart. I felt it break free and like a helium balloon it started to rise up and up and up, until it bumped against the roof of my mouth, against the back of my teeth, and I have made myself breathe in through my nose and then exhale, feeling it slipping free all the while, almost seeing it in my peripheral vision like a smoke from a cigarette that I have never even managed to smoke in my lifetime. 

And it has dawned on me, at that very moment, that now I truly and truthfully have nothing, absolutely nothing in this world left, of myself or of anything else that exists under Gods and Deities and ancient waterfalls since the break of time. 

I woke up to the throat-closing silence. I was still standing pressed against the bathroom wall, my wobbly legs dutifully locked in the standing position. The Man, I knew, was in His room, tired after many hours of screaming. The Woman, while also not sleeping, has locked Herself in another room, happy She was mostly spared the vicious stench of the Man’s voice tonight. I felt nothing, and yet the strongest sensation I have, rather uselessly, felt in years, was my heart clenching as I realized how much I miss The Woman, and how much I wish for Her to have protected me, protected my helium balloon that was now free and gone and nowhere to be found anymore and it was too late, too late, too late. The Witch has won.

Outside, the sky was breaking with a sickly yellow light. 

And I have decided to quit my job.  
-  
Quitting one’s job is not as much of a calm, educated, hard thought-through decision as one might like to think. When I was quitting my job, it was rather a spur of the moment event, yet one that was a long time coming, with its ugly yellow smile, cheap tweed suit and a suspicious small suitcase full of difficult-to-read papers clenched in glowed fingers. 

In other words, it was rash, messy and I was absolutely terrified and/or numb through most of it. 

I took my phone with me when I sneaked out of the house, and keys - maybe in the delusion that I will find my helium balloon somewhere along the way out of the town and into the fields, that I will be, somehow, through some sheer miracle and good-will of the world able to re-capture it and lock it safely back into my chest, exactly one inch below my left lung, in the space between it and my heart. It was not hope that made me grab my keys – it was a hope-conditioned mentality, a fight-or-flight instinct still trying to leave me a doggy-door back in.

I passed through the small town in a daze of an early-morning mist and a feverish feeling of silence and serenity wrapping around my head. The loneliness of the whole world under the clouds and above them was crushing on me like a tidal-wave of butterflies, desperately trying to set my stomach aflame with a happy fire but causing it to burn to the ground with ears-tearing screeches of anxiety instead.  
I have missed no-one, then. Not The Boy, not The Woman, not The Man, not even my friend, The Knight of The Brush. They absolutely despised me and I suddenly once more loved them for it, because they did not despise me for any of the reasons others did. They despised me simply because they despised everyone else. 

Still I briefly wondered whether They could smell a german marzipan on me, too. 

Unlike a true watch-dog that ran away from home, I crossed the streets with a sense of purpose, feeling terribly lost and yet absolutely sure of where I was going at the same time. I felt lost, because I truly had nothing, now, and I knew it – and I felt sure, because, perhaps by some primal instinct tattooed into a gut of every cursed watch-dog, I knew what is left for those who have nothing left. 

I still gazed around, my vision obscured around the edges with exhaustion and hopeless childish yearning for comfort and tear-release, trying to find my helium balloon, but I knew it was futile. That one last piece of Something Given by The Life Itself, that one last drop of hoping against hope, that one last bit of Me that was not a watch-dog, was finally gone. 

I passed suspiciously staring cats and they saw me, because the world is made by the rules of B-rated horror movies and cats can see spirits. 

I stepped over the sea of still half-sleeping sparrows, absolutely numb and yet taken aback by their strange poetry of mute secretiveness and hostility, mindful that I might be seeing them for the very last time, feeling incredibly scared and relieved while doing so. 

I passed the last houses at the outskirts of the town, mindful that I might be seeing those for the last time as well, feeling nothing. 

I crossed the fields, my body tearing through the mist, intruding on something older and more sacred than universe itself, and it felt inappropriate for a watch-dog to do so, but it also felt like the only right thing in the world since the invention of kindness and empathy in beings. Even then my feelings were muted, just like I was muted, and after such a long time of having no voice but so many emotions, it was like a last laughing slap to the face that night. 

I came to a stop when I have reached a small seating placed far in the fields, along the narrow path leading into the woods. It was feverishly cold with E-moll-sour edges, and for the first time since The Man (being so very near and yet so incredibly far away from me at that moment, so far He could not reach me even if He stood right there next to me, further away than the most beautiful deep-sea fish and the true meaning of the word “Love”) started screaming almost nine hours ago, for the first time since I pressed my back against a bathroom wall and immediately felt more friendship towards it than I have felt towards anyone in years – 

I finally let my legs quit their job, too, and sat down.

I did that knowing I most probably won’t be needing to stand back up.

Feeling absolutely hollow and fearless and terrified, having absolutely nothing and thus only one thing for me left, being forsaken by Gods, Deities, Witches, elements and flowers alike, I picked up my phone. Because there was one number in the world that would listen to my explanations, even if I could not voice them, even if 

\- He loves me not, not, not –

we are not friends anymore, which is understandable because I am still a watch-dog, and if I quit today, I won’t be anything at all, but not being anything at all is still better than being the one thing that makes you guilty for your existence itself. And Alice might have found truths that have lead her back to herself in the end, but I am no Alice and I was forsaken by the Gods, Deities, Witches, elements and flowers alike.

And so I took a deep breath – letting my heart fill to the brim with Love that I was unable to feel for anyone or anything else, and it felt blasphemic to put that sacred-damning feeling into now completely demolished and resolutely numb wasteland of my rib-cage.

Not daring to breath out, scared out of my numb, numb, buzzing wasp-filled mind that if I do, all that love in my heart will float out just like that balloon and get lost in the wet clouds above forever, the bitingly cold metal in my trembling hand resonated with the sensation in my eyes as I pressed the call button.  
\- 

Somewhere outside of the World a phone rang, and a dragonfly with wings softer and quicker than a moonlight, colourful and articulate like a church window mosaic, had a dream of floating.

**Author's Note:**

> This was a conceptual bullshit I needed to get off my chest, and the internet fell a victim to it. 
> 
> If anyone has read this far, I wish you the best day you could ever have and rest assured that your bravery will be sang about one day. 
> 
> Love, R.


End file.
